Talks between England and Bangladeshi cricketers ahead of the Prime Minister’s
Girl Summit would have been an absurd concept at home of cricket even 16
years ago, when women were still forbidden to become MCC members

On the right road: Tammy Beaumont (bottom) was one of three England cricketers at the Lord's meeting on MondayPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

At Lord’s on Monday, just before England’s cricketers mistakenly tripped aboard the Defeat Express, a meeting was being held in the gorgeous Coronation Gardens next to the MCC museum.

Under the opulently bearded gaze of the bronze statue of WG Grace, England’s Lydia Greenway, Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont talked to Mitu Roy and Tania Akter, two young female Bangladeshi cricketers flown over to Britain by the charity BRAC ahead of the Prime Minister’s Girl Summit held on Tuesday.

With the help of a translator, the young women discussed the problems of child, early and forced marriage (CEFM), female genital mutilation (FGM) and how sport can empower women to defy cultural and social norms and build the confidence to realize their potential.

As International Development Minister Desmond Swayne, said: “Sport can make a real difference to the lives of girls in developing countries. It gives them a healthy, enjoyable past time, of course. Even more importantly it helps them to establish themselves in their community, raises their status and gives them control over their future.

“Too often girls around the world are robbed of a choice in life by being forced to marry early. It also puts them at risk of missing an education and dying young in childbirth."

The meeting illustrates how far Lord’s has travelled in a comparatively short time – it would have been an absurd concept not only in 1953, when the Coronation Gardens were opened, but also 16 years ago, when women were still forbidden to become MCC members.

It was also a heartening coming together of female sporting role models who not only speak intelligently but do not mind being photographed sweaty and crumpled, running around and tracksuited.

Because, while the United Nations campaigns against CEFM and FGM in some developing countries and their immigrant communities in Britain and overseas, the West is acquiring its own new toxic environment for young girls to grow up in.

Last week, a glossy leaflet from Bupa popped through the letterbox, entitled “Guiding you through the Cosmetic Treatment Landscape”. This demoralizing publication pointed not only out all the possible faults with female face, many of which were news to me – Nasolabial folds? Marionette Lines? – but also the miraculous new ways to deal with them.

Bupa can also work on cheek definition and lip enhancement and help erase forehead lines, frown lines, lines about the eyes and neck lines – all once considered part of the natural process of ageing. As the leaflet seductively advised “it would be our pleasure to help guide you toward your desired cosmetic destination".

All the treatment was specifically only available to those over 18, but you wonder if, like the man on the bus wearing a T-shirt spelling out “I f------ hate feminists”, that the author conveniently forgot that most people over the age of five can pick something off the doormat and read. Or, more bleakly, did not care.

Such advertisements used to be confined to the small ads in the back of women’s magazines, and, last time I properly looked, 'only' related to cosmetic breast surgery. Yet Bupa, which does a lot of good sponsoring things like rhe Great Run and Great Swim Series, is not alone.

Suddenly, seemingly in the time it takes to turn away and make a cup of tea, cosmetic improvements to the female face and body are sold in the same way as double-glazing and venetian blinds. How can this have become the same sort of lifestyle choice as a manicure or a back massage?

We should collectively be complaining about this pressure on our daughters to be cosmetically perfect in the same way as we object to the presence of topless models on page 3 of The Sun. Each promotes an unrealistic image of what it is to be female and projects women as purely physical objects to be judged both by men and each other.

The simplest way to help girls out of this toxic atmosphere is to get them exercising. To get them in a pair of cricket boots, or a swimming costume or barefoot jumping around a dance studio. There they learn to scrap about red-faced, hair all over the place, not caring one jot about what they look like.

They think about running fast and jumping high, their heart-rate and their pulse, winning, losing and everything in between. They enjoy themselves and the fact they are human with all kinds of physical possibilities, not some strange new perfect species without the marks that separate living creatures with two-dimensional images.